We have finished receiving feedback from young people on the mSoothebox app, and plan to take this further in 2020. We also learned more about what young people thought about sharing their mental health data for research by running Citizen Jury Workshops at various youth groups, schools & colleges across Greater Manchester.
CAMHS.Digital would like to say a big thank you to all the children & young people, parents and teachers, youth group/service leaders who have got involved in our work…we couldn’t have done it without you!
From everyone at CAMHS.Digital, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
During the last 12 months, CAMHS.Digital & Sparta Digital have worked with children & young people to co-design a self-harm self-management mobile app . We have held several workshops at the University of Manchester and youth groups & colleges across Greater Manchester. We have been able to use the innovative ideas the groups have come up with to design a prototype of the Augmented Reality app! More recent workshops have focused on getting valuable feedback on this design, and we plan to take these comments on board to make improvements and take this project further ( …so watch this space!)
Over 50 young people were involved in this project- a huge thank you to everyone who attended the workshops! We won’t be running any more workshops on this particular project, but will be organizing more CYP Advisory Group workshops in 2020! For more information please email us at camhs.digital@gmail.com or fill in this form.
The CAMHS.Digital team had the opportunity to present the mSoothebox project at the NIHR MindTech Symposium in London on 5th December 2019.
CAMHS.Digital are excited to offer children and young people (13-25 yrs) the chance to get involved in our work and join us as Citizen Researchers!
Workshops will run every 4-6 weeks at the University of Manchester (Travel expenses will be reimbursed). The workshops will involve discussions around developing new digital health innovations (e.g. mobile phone apps, virtual reality, etc), mental health and data sharing. You do not have to attend every single session to be part of the group.
This week we joined the Health Action Champions group at the Greater Manchester Youth Network to run a mSootheBox workshop. We presented the aims of the projects and talked about some of the ideas from our previous workshops. The group had a go on the prototype and gave valuable feedback on what they liked about the design and what could be done to improve it.
We will continue working on the mSootheBox app project until November 2019! This means you still have time to check out the first prototype of the app and give us your opinions on it. Future workshops will be announced shortly and everyone who takes part will receive a £20 shopping voucher as a thank you!
If you are aged 16-25 and would like to get involved, please email us at camhs.digital@gmail.com or fill in this form.
Yesterday, we held the third workshop to design mSootheBox – our new Augmented Reality (AR) app based on the use of safe distraction techniques, which is aiming to help young people who self-harm. Oldham Youth Council kindly invited CAMHS.Digital and Sparta Digital to run the workshop at their local centre.
Firstly, we reminded the group of the aims of the
project and what had been discussed in the first 2 workshops.
Sparta Digital were able to use a lot of the ideas
from the previous workshops and build it into a single app! They presented the first
wire frame of the mSoothebox app to the group.
Following the presentation by Sparta Digital, we
had a Q&A session. There were some really constructive ideas and
conversations about the colour, AR features and ways to make the app suitable for
different ages. The group also came up with even more innovative ideas that could
be added to the mSootheBox app!
In our final workshop on we will be asking for more
people to share their views – Thursday 25th
July at 12.30-1.30pm, University of Manchester.
If you are aged 16-25 and would like to get involved, please email us at camhs.digital@gmail.com or fill in this form.
Are you aged 16-25 and keen to make a difference to young people’s mental health? If so, CAMHS.Digital are thrilled to offer you the chance to get involved in a new digital project!
CAMHS.Digital want your help to design a new mobile app: mSootheBox. mSootheBox aims to help children and young people to manage self-harm behaviours using Augmented Reality (AR) technology. You can read more about the mSootheBox project here.
We are inviting young people to develop the app in interactive workshops. No knowledge of self-harm is necessary to take part, but by being involved you will have the chance to:
Share your views on mental health and apps
Design the mSootheBox app
Work with industry digital experts – Sparta Digital
Our third workshop will be held on Thursday 27th June at The University of Manchester, from 5.30 – 6.30pm.
We recently held the second workshop to design mSootheBox – our new Augmented Reality (AR) app based on the use of safe distraction techniques, which is aiming to help young people who self-harm. The workshop was attended by young people aged 16-25 years, and jointly led by industry experts from Sparta Digital, who had been working hard to develop the ideas produced in Workshop 1.
Sparta began by recapping the first workshop and reminding the young people of the four key concepts they had come up with. These were:
‘AR Pet’ (pictured) – where a user would look after/play with/exercise a virtual pet in the users real environment
‘Walking stories’ – which would encourage a user to exercise whilst completing a story
‘Customisable Environment’ – which would create an AR environment of things that make a user happy e.g. images, objects etc.
‘My happy place’ – which would allow users to upload/share a personalised ‘happy place’, placing it on a map and adding songs, notes etc. for other users to find
Concept 1: A virtual ‘AR’ pet, which would distract the user by giving them something to play with and look after
Working in groups, the young people chose their favourite concept and created a ‘Paper Prototype’, designing how they would like the app to look, different screens, its features etc. in much more detail. After presenting their ideas to the rest of the group and discussing each one, the young people were then asked to consider how much customisation they would like to see in the app, such as being able to change the colours, logo or name. It was clear that everybody had different preferences for these options, so it is definitely something that needs to be considered in the final design!
Once again, we had a fantastic and very creative workshop, and everyone was very impressed with the ideas produced. In Workshop 3 the young people will finalise the protoypes, and think more about how AR could be used in the app.
If you are aged 16-25 and would like to get involved, please email us at Camhs.Digital@gmail.com or fill in this form.
